Chapter Text
~*~*~
Jughead is sitting in Mr. Philips’ office, wringing his hands in his lap and grinding his teeth against the rising resentment. He’s in the middle of a conversation with Mr. Phillips that he fears more and more will end in him losing the Red and Black and he hates it. None of it is fair. If only he can explain to Mr. Phillips that the Serpents aren’t the enemy here, that it’s the Ghoulies who’re bringing drugs and violence to Southside High and that he’ll be able to prove it with his next article, maybe then Mr. Phillips will be swayed to let him continue with the paper.
It’s still a bit of a shock to him how much his opinion of the Serpents has changed since he got to Southside High. A few weeks ago he’d wanted nothing to do with the gang that, in his mind, had dragged down his father into a maelstrom of bad choices that ended with him behind bars. Now he, who used to be their biggest detractor is sitting here trying to defend them. After becoming a member himself.
He thinks for a moment of high horses and painfully long falls but shakes it off in favor of finishing making his point.
His phone buzzes in his jacket pocket, but he’s so caught up in his argument that he barely notices. What does get both his and Mr. Phillips’ attention, however, is the commotion that breaks loose in the hallway outside only moments later. Their heads both snap toward the door of Mr. Phillips’ office simultaneously and Jughead would appreciate the comical element of it, if the circumstances were less worrying.
He rushes out of the office, followed by Mr. Phillips, to see what the Hell is going on now. In the few seconds Jughead has to take in the scene, he catches bits and pieces of the chaos that has broken loose. The hallway is swarming with cops, mayor McCoy standing at one end of the hallway, looking on like a huge carrion crow, self-righteousness written all over her features and displayed proudly. Lockers are being torn open and searched and all around him teens are being manhandled into cuffs, most of them Serpents.
There’s the flash of a familiar mop of bright red hair at the other end of the hallway, Archie’s face panicked and his eyes wide as he searches the crowd. The exact moment that Archie’s gaze finds Jughead, Jughead’s world tilts and Archie spins out of his line of sight as a rough set of hands grabs his shoulders, spins him around and shoves him into the lockers hard. His face thuds dully against the corroded metal and for a second, he sees stars dance across his vision.
There’s a sharp burst of pain and then the taste of copper blooms across his tongue as blood starts dripping from his nose. Another bruise to go with the matching set from his initiation, still bright and tender, head spinning, as a pair of handcuffs clicks shut around his wrists.
The metal bites into his skin, too tight, and it doesn’t take long for panic to kick in. He looks over his shoulder as the deputy pulls him through the hall and he gets another glimpse of Archie, fists balled at his sides and face contorted, but then he stumbles over his own feet and Archie is lost again. He would have fallen, if not for the deputy gripping his arms and he’s led outside to the armada of squad cars that’s waiting there.
None of this is legal a detached part of his brain supplies helpfully, but when he puts his thoughts into words, no-one gives enough of a fuck to actually listen to him.
~*~*~
He’s in an interrogation room at the Sheriff’s station, his hands slowly going numb behind his back. A trail of dried, flaking blood running down from his clogged up nose across his mouth, chin and neck until it meets his collar where it’s soaked into the fabric of his shirt, still damp and sticky there . He must look like an extra out of a Wes Craven movie, Jughead muses numbly as the deputy across from him reads him his rights. A t least his nose isn’t broken, that much he can tell. Small mercies and all that .
It takes a considerable amount of self-control to not make some sarcastic remark about the listlessness in the deputy’s voice as he rattles off his script , but somehow he manages, teeth grit and scowl almost painful.
“What exactly are the charges supposed to be? Because I honestly have no idea why I’m here.” Jughead tries and fails to make it sound civil, but the officer across form him really doesn’t look like he gives much of a shit either way. The man snorts and looks up from the form he’s filling out, Jughead’s wallet and his ID card lying on the table next to him.
“Do you want me to make a list?” Deputy Andersen, as his name-tag helpfully provides, asks dryly. “How about ‘drug possession’, ‘gang affiliation’, ‘causing civil unrest’, ‘resisting arrest’ and ‘being an insufferable little piece of trash’?“
Jughead takes a deep breath before he gets started. “OK, first of all, I don’t really think that last one is something you’re allowed to arrest people for. And second, do you have any proof at all for the rest of those? And what about a lawyer and a phone call? Don’t I have a right to those? Because all of this sounds pretty arbitrary to me.” It’s a little hard to sound as indignant as he feels, what with his clogged up nose and all, but he does a fairly decent job of it anyway.
Andersen snorts and shakes his head, looking annoyed as he goes back to filling out the stupid form. “Great, we’ve got a smart ass on our hands. That attitude is going to give you a really hard time where you’re going.”
“What?”
“Oh, you and your little Serpent buddies are being transferred to Leopold and Loeb juvenile detention center as soon as you’re processed. We don’t have room at the Sheriff’s station to keep all of you here until your legal matters are sorted out. Anything regarding lawyers or phone calls will be dealt with once you’re over there.”
“You can’t just ship us off to prison without due process.” Jughead bursts out, brows furrowed and resentment rising in his chest like a fist unfurling. “That’s got to be breaking at least five laws or something. If we were Riverdale High students, you’d never even think of pulling a stunt like that! You’d be bending over backwards to make sure everything goes by the book. ”
“Yeah, well, you’re not.”, Deputy Andersen says, putting his signature on the form, a sarcastic twist to his lips. He gets up and pulls Jughead out of his chair and onto his feet without much regard towards Jughead’s comfort. “You can discuss all that with the deadbeat lawyer you’ll get assigned by the court. Feel free to file a complaint.”
Jughead fumes but saves his words, because they’re so obviously wasted on this asshole .
He gets shoved back into the overcrowded holding cell, where Sweet Pea, Fangs and a couple of other Serpents are perched together. Some of them with fresh bruises on their faces and a mixture of anger and resignation around them that makes the air feel uncomfortably thick. They’re all quiet, glowering and hanging back, no use in drawing attention to themselves and getting into any more trouble.
This is so fucked up, all of it and the worst thing is that there’s nothing Jughead can do about it right now. He’ll just have to suck it up and wait it out until he gets the chance to talk to someone who can actually help.
Which brings him to the question of who he’s going to call once he gets the chance and he comes up painfully short. In the last few days his list of friends and allies (a list that was never all that long to begin with) has pretty much been reduced to the people sitting in the holding cell with him. After that stunt that Betty and Archie pulled on him, he refuses to break down and call either of them. If that’s how they want things to be they can just go fuck themselves for all Jughead cares. The memory of what Archie said to him still sits heavy in his chest, a wound that’s been festering for days. A wound that feels like it’s just going to get worse as time goes by, instead of better.
His dad’s in prison and unreachable to him now. And, oh, there’s an awful mix of bitterness and misery there, the irony of his situation not lost on him.
What he does have though, is the new family that has welcomed him into their midst. Jughead will call Tall Boy and pray that the Serpents on the outside will know what to do. The thought brings at least a little comfort with it. There’s no way the charges are going to stick, Jughead doesn’t think, but he still wants to spend as little time behind bars as possible. One stint in Juvy was more than enough, thank you very much. And while it hadn’t exactly been a smooth ride, he knows he had it relatively easy back then, because of his age group.
This time around is going to be a whole ‘nother ball game, to go with a sports metaphor for once. But he’ll tackle that problem once he gets to it.
What Jughead can’t stop wondering about though, in the mean time, is what Archie was doing at Southside High. Had he come to rub more salt into Jughead’s wounds? Or had he come to try and make amends? Or, even more unlikely, had he through some improbable twist of fate known about the raid beforehand and come to warn Jughead? Had that been the message on his phone?
Jughead scoffs at himself, angry about the way he’s still trying to see the best in Archie, how he’s trying to raise him up onto some kind of pedestal. Floating above the garbage that is the rest of this fucking town, when Archie has proven more than once already that he’s perfectly capable of letting Jughead down when Jughead needs him the most.
There’s no way to check his phone until he gets his stuff back and that probably means until he gets out of Leopold and Loeb. He squeezes onto the bench with the others, mindful of his still cuffed hands and lets his head roll back against the smooth cement wall, while trying to ignore the queasy, fluttering sensation that’s building up just beneath his collar bone. Something he refuses to admit is fear.
~*~*~
It takes a lot less time to get everyone processed and loaded onto the prison bus than Jughead would have expected. It’s amazing how swift and efficient bureaucracy can work, when the right people profit from it, Jughead thinks bitterly and grinds his teeth until his jaw hurts.
Because there’s no way that this raid wasn’t orchestrated by someone higher up, someone with a stake in the game and something to gain from putting a bunch of teenagers behind bars. He just has to figure out who.
“Can you please stop being so jittery?” Sweet Pea snaps from the seat next to his. “You’re driving me fucking crazy.”
It’s only then that Jughead realizes his leg’s been bouncing up and down of it’s own accord, a nervous tick, rattling the chains that connect his wrist cuffs to his ankle cuffs. Shit. Jughead takes a deep breath and forces himself to sit still.
“Sorry.”, he mumbles without looking at Sweet Pea, gaze drifting out of the window instead. Sweet Pea huffs, but doesn’t say anything else.
Outside, a sea of trees blurs past. Evergreens and firs in a seemingly endless swirl of green.
~*~*~
The huge, depressing block of cement, chain-link fence and barbed wire curls that is Leopold and Loeb towers before them like a dark omen against the overcast sky as the bus pulls closer.
Toni gets taken away with the rest of the female Serpents, to a different wing, and Jughead and the other males are herded along by an impatient asshole, who likes playing with his nightstick a little too much. Processing at the detention center is way less friendly and way more humiliating than it had been at the Sheriff’s station.
Standing in a line against a chain link fence in the a cold, secluded courtyard they’re forced to strip out of their clothes, stack everything they have on them into sad little piles in front of them and then watch as a guard collects their things and whisk them away. Jughead’s hand hesitates on his beanie, throat uncomfortably tight until someone yells at him for taking too long and he yanks it off like he would a band-aid. Lets it drop onto his pile and forces himself not to look at it again or to wonder too much about whether or not he’s going to get it back intact.
A correctional officer steps up to each of them, flashlight in hand, makes them open their mouths and lift their tongues, shines it into their ears and noses. And as if that isn’t humiliating enough already, Jughead has a moment of absolute mortification, when he glances to the side and sees Fangs turn around to face the chain link and a guard with a latex glove on one hand step up to him. Jughead snaps his eyes away, trains his gaze carefully onto a spot in the distance ahead of him, same as the others, and does the best he can to pretend like he’s somewhere else.
He can’t fucking believe that they’re doing a full cavity search on them, right here in the open, not even the illusion of privacy to soften the ordeal. It’s cruel and unnecessary and Jughead is sure there has to be a regulation against it somewhere, but, just like before, no-one actually seems to give a damn.
When the guard with his stupid glove steps up to Jughead and he’s the one who has to turn around and bend over, he screws his eyes shut and tries to focus on the mental scratchpad he keeps in his head with notes for things he’s going to write some day. Thinks about how satisfying it’s going to be to make the Sheriff’s office and Leopold and Loeb the focus of his next article, outlining exactly how they deal in prejudice and blatant ignorance when it comes to handling a bunch of teenagers, whose right to fair process is being trampled underfoot. If Mr. Phillips is ever going to let him write for the Red and Black again after this, that is, and his stomach twists itself up even more at the thought.
Jughead flinches at the first contact, latex on skin. It’s clinical and impersonal and he hates it with a miserable kind of severity. He bites his tongue hard enough to draw blood when the guard pushes into him with that same businesslike brusqueness and still it’s not enough to keep down the high-pitched whine of discomfort that slips out like a curse. Heat rushes to his face and all he wants to do is crawl into a hole somewhere and die in piece, he feels so embarrassed. Whatever the jerk in uniform is doing, it fucking hurts and it takes way longer than Jughead would think necessary.
Once they’re through with that part, the guards hose them down, one after another, the water hard and cold, a shock to Jughead’s system, and throw delousing powder at them, like they’re animals at the shelter. Jughead screws his eyes shut and presses his lips into a thin line to keep the burning grit out until someone steps up and drags a rag across his face to clear it. At least it finally gets rid of most of the blood on his face.
Naked and wet and miserable with a hand full of delousing powder stuck to his hair and skin, he feels like he’s been teleported into the first five minutes of every prison movie he’s ever seen. None of them are particularly cheerful and only a scant few ever end well. It’s the worst kind of cliche.
~*~*~
Each of them gets handed a bar of unscented soap, a roll of toilet paper, a plastic tooth brush, a small tube of tooth paste and a stack of prison issue clothes. Two pairs each of sweatpants, a sweater, t-shirt, socks, boxers, all in uniform gray, and one pair of nondescript sneakers. Jughead scrambles to get dressed as soon as they’re allowed, eager to put something between himself and the cold, eager to cover himself back up. The sweatpants are a little long, the sweater a little wide, but they do the job well enough and even though the smell of disinfectant and laundry detergent on them isn’t exactly pleasant at least they’re clean.
~*~*~
Their cell block is a long, depressing hallway with clinical lighting, naked cement walls and floors and a row of cells on each side. Most of the cells are empty at the moment, doors to them open and Jughead guesses the other inmates are probably out in the yard or whatever other options Leopold and Loeb offers them to hang at. The guards divide them up into their respective cells, two a piece for most of them.
Sweat Pea and him are the last pair to get put away, with Fangs in the cell directly across from them. Sweat Pea sighs dramatically, when he realizes that they’ll be sharing a cell and flops down on one of the cots, arms crossed over his chest and face scrunched up, looking irritable. And, yeah, it’s not like Jughead is particularly ecstatic at the prospect of being stuck in a 6 by 8 foot cell with him for God knows how long, but at least Sweet Pea is someone he knows. Someone Jughead is reasonably sure won’t stab him in his sleep as long as Jughead doesn’t annoy him too much.
The door, made entirely of iron bars, clangs shut behind them and Jughead steps up to it, the guard, who locked them in already turning to leave.
“Hey,” Jughead calls out and the guard halts and looks back, frowning at him. “Aren’t we supposed to get a phone call? A lawyer? Something?”
Sweet Pea gives Jughead a sharp look, but Jughead ignores him. If he lets the guy go now, who knows how long they’ll leave them in here to rot. This whole thing could drag out for weeks, maybe longer if they’re really unlucky and Jughead is aggravated enough to need an outlet for it. Arguing seems like the thing to do. He’s not just going to sit there quietly and let them bury him and the others in the System. Just because they live on the wrong side of the tracks it sure as Hell doesn’t mean these people can just get away with blatantly ignoring their rights. Jughead knows from experience that the system is crooked, but he’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut about it.
The guard steps up to the bars, leans against them leisurely, voice dripping with barely repressed sarcasm. “You’ll get a lawyer once the court appoints you one. Which is probably going to take a while. These things are pretty slow moving around here. And for the phone call, you’ll get that as soon as we’re done with your paperwork.”
Jughead can feel his nose scrunch up, still tender from his close-up with the locker, accompanied by a rise of impotent anger. “So you’re just going to let us rot in here until you feel like it? None of this is legal! We shouldn’t even be here. Don’t you care at all about the repercussions something like this could have? About the implications for this institution?”
Any notion of civility falls away from the guard’s face at that, it goes stony and cold and before Jughead can step away the guard thrusts an arm through the bars and grabs a fistful of Jughead’s sweater just below the neckline and twists. The asshole yanks Jughead forward until he’s mashed uncomfortably against the bars, cold metal digging into his chest, unyielding, nose to nose with the guard.
“You know,” the guy says, tone hard and unimpressed, “insolent little shits like you get into trouble real quick around here. I suggest you do as you’re fucking told and shut your pretty little mouth before I shut it for you.”
With that he lets go of Jughead’s sweater and shoves him back, Jughead stumbling with the force of it. Then the guard turns and leaves, clanging his nightstick against the bars as he goes.
“I can’t believe this place!” Jughead burst out, arms flailing helplessly. He grinds his teeth against the urge to shout after the guard and starts pacing along the middle of the cell, back and forth between the two bunks instead, fingers combing through his hair in a feeble show of frustration.
“Are you stupid or something?” Sweet Pea hisses and brings Jughead out of his train of thought.
“What?” Jughead stares back at him irritably, not really in the mood for any of Sweet Pea’s shit right now.
Sweat Pea gives up slouching on his bunk in favor of getting to his feet and into Jughead’s space, looming a good 4 inches over Jughead, so that Jughead has to cant his head up to meet his eyes. Jughead hates the way it makes his stomach flutter nervously and he squares his shoulders against the urge to step back. He’s not going to be cowed that easily.
“If you don’t keep your mouth shut and check your fucking attitude, you’re going to get all of us in trouble.” Sweet Pea says accusingly, hands balled at his side. There’s always something about Sweet Pea, about the way he holds himself that makes it seem like he’s just on the verge of exploding, a latent promise of violence right beneath the surface. But it’s even worse now, here, and Jughead has a moment to wonder whether it’s this place that’s doing that to Sweet Pear or whether it’s being stuck in here with Jughead.
Instead of focusing on any of that, Jughead distracts himself with his own frustration, not ready to back down. “So what? Don’t you care at all about how unfair this is?”
Sweat Pea huffs out a derisive breath and thins his mouth into a mean smile. “Life isn’t fucking fair, Jones. I thought you’d’ve figured that much out by now.” He spreads his arms and unfurls his fists in favor of waving his hands around. “Not, when you live on the Southside anyway. And least of all in here. If you wanna survive in a place like this, you better learn how to keep your head down and hope to Hell nobody fucking notices you. All your stupid Northside attitude is going to do for you here is make your life fucking miserable. And I’m not going to let you drag the rest of us down with you, if you don’t get with the program.”
Jughead grinds his teeth against the retort lodged at the back of his throat. He wants to punch something. Yell at Sweet Pea just to get some of his frustration out, but the smarter part of himself knows that that wouldn’t make anything better. He’d just end up escalating the situation and Sweet Pea sure as Hell isn’t going to be the one to back off and let things be in the face of that. Either Jughead takes the high route here or they’re going to end up throwing fists at each other and wouldn’t that just be fucking great?
“You sound like you know exactly what you’re talking about.” Jughead says and takes a step back, drops down onto the cot across from the one Sweet Pea has already claimed as his and crosses his arms over his chest. Mirroring Sweet Pea’s previous slouch. The words come out a little more bitter, than Jughead had meant them to, but Sweet Pea takes the hint anyway and sinks back down onto his own cot. He still looks pissed, but at least not enough to sock Jughead in the face, anymore. Which, yeah, Jughead figures his face looks bad enough as it is. No need for any more abuse.
“This isn’t my first time in here, alright. I know the drill.” Sweet Pea grumbles and Jughead raises an inquisitive eyebrow at him, but that’s all Sweet Pea offers.
Defeated, Jughead sighs and flops back on the cot as a sullen silence settles over them again. He scrubs at his nose carefully, trying to rub away the last of the flaky blood from around his nostrils, winces, when all it does is prod at the hurt and lets his hand drop away again.
It takes him all of five minutes before he can feel himself get restless again.
The cell doesn’t exactly offer much in the form of distractions. It’s a gray, depressing block of concrete, broken up only by the bars of the door and a tiny little window across form that. Set high and covered with heavy chain link, barely enough to let in the midday-sun. There are the two cots, one on either side of the cell, the pillows lumpy, the blanked a width of gray, scratchy wool that Jughead doubts is gong to do anything to ward off the chill at night and the mattress barely even there over the hard steel of the cot. A narrow, splintering little shelf screwed to the wall at the head of each cot for possessions they don’t have, aside from their spare set of clothes, and a stainless steel sink and toilet combo in the corner next to the door. God, Jughead really fucking hopes they have toilets with a little more privacy around this place somewhere because he’s not about to drop trou with a God damn audience, if there’s any other option. Things are demeaning enough as it is.
His thoughts wander to his dad and he quietly wonders, if it’s as depressing and bleak at Shankshaw as it is here or if it’s even worse. Makes him wonder, how his dad is doing it, keeping sane and keeping himself safe, or if he’s just good at hiding from Jughead the way it eats at him, takes junks out of his soul at a time.
He pulls his arm across his eyes and tries to ignore the swell of hopelessness that makes his chest feel heavy and his throat feel tight. How is he supposed to help his dad, if he can’t even help himself right now?
~*~*~
Jughead looses track of time for a while, locled in his head, focusing on planning out new chapters for his book to keep his thoughts form straying into hopeless territory, to keep himself busy as they wait. He’s so zoned out, that it actually catches him by surprise, when his stomach makes a miserable little gurgling sound, loud enough that Sweet Pea raises an annoyed eyebrow at him.
“Sorry.”, Jughead mumbles sheepishly, feeling color rise to his cheeks and clasping his hands over his stomach like that can magically keep it quiet. “Didn’t really have time for breakfast this morning.”
Now, that his attention is on it, he can feel how hungry he is and he thinks miserably, that they probably missed lunch as well.
Sweet Pea snorts, not really amused. “Well, lunchtime in here ended about an hour ago, I’d guess. And since you pissed off the guards, there’s a good chance that they’ll make us miss dinner, too.”
“Great.”, Jughead mumbles and grits his teeth in frustration. This just keeps getting better. He combs his fingers through his hair before falling back onto his lousy excuse for a pillow and picking back up where he left off with his novel, doing his best to ignore the gnawing ache in his gut and Sweet Pea’s disgruntled glances.
~*~*~
To everyone’s not-so-quiet disappointment, Sweet Pea’s prediction about lunch holds true.
It’s some time during late afternoon, Jughead guesses by the quality of the light filtering in through the window and the dull hollowness in his stomach, when a couple of guards come down the corridor and herd them out of their cells.
The phones are set in a delimited little area next to the common room, which they walk past on the way, catching glimpses of a couple of other inmates lounging around tables, playing cards or staring at the small TV in the upper left corner, some sending them furtive glances, mindful of the guards. The room that houses the phones is empty, though. The phones themselves are ancient, huge receivers and round dialing plates on bodies screwed to the wall, three in a row, just far enough from each other to offer a modicum of privacy if the conversation is held lowly.
Everyone gets ten minutes to make their call, then is commandeered to step aside and let the next one have their turn. Jughead calls the White Wyrm in the hopes of catching Tall Boy there. He doesn’t actually have the number for Tall Boy’s cell memorized, but the landline for the Wyrm has been stuck in his head for years. All the times he’d rushed to get the phone before his mom and Jellybean could when it plopped up on the small screen, because he knew it meant his dad needed to be dragged home and he didn’t want his mom to have to set foot in that fucking place. So many ugly memories, even after mom and JB left for good, that are now, slowly being replaced by different ones, better ones. By the tentative, ever skeptical hope of having found a place he just might be able to belong.
Tall Boy actually is at the Wyrm and the bartender, Hogeye, passes the phone along helpfully.
Tall Boy and the other Serpents have already heard about the raid and apparently Jughead is not the first to call the Wyrm from Leopold and Loeb. They’re on it, Tall Boy assures him, have already reached out to certain acquaintances and are doing what they can to get them out as soon as possible, although there are no estimates as to when that might be, yet.
It’s reassuring, at least, to know that they won’t be forgotten or abandoned and it’s a Hell of a lot more than Jughead is used to.
Tall Boy promises to get message to Jughead’s dad, too, just so that FP won’t wonder why Jughead isn’t answering his calls or showing up to visit anymore. Even if it means that Jughead will have some explaining to do once this whole thing blows over.
~*~*~
Left to their own devices until lock-down, Sweet Pea makes noise about heading out to the yard to mingle with the other Serpents in here and Jughead supposes that makes sense. If he’s honest, he’d much rather curl up on his bunk and try to get some sleep or something, he’s hungry and tired and his face throbs painfully, a headache building across the bridge of his nose. But he’s not stupid enough to go alone, he sees the glances the other inmates throw them, assessing, trying to place them on the pecking order that structures life in a place like this, to suss out potential weaknesses.
The hostility in here is thick and heavy, smothering almost and it makes the hairs on the back of his neck prickle uncomfortably. Chances are, that the Serpents aren’t the only gang with members behind bars in this particular facility and if there are any Ghoulies around, Jughead knows now to steer clear as best he can. He’s learned his fucking lesson.
There’s a surprising number of people out in the yard considering the soft chill of the evening that creeps through the fabric of Jughead’s sweats quickly once they’re outside. There are inmates gathered on benches, around tables, out on the basketball court or near the few set up bits of gym equipment, some just milling about on the grass or near the fences. The weirdest thing about it, Jughead thinks, is the complete lack of the sort of color such crowds normally bring with them, everyone there except for the few guards patrolling around is dressed in the same gray prison issue outfits.
Out here, eyes land on them more openly, some of the guys they walk past going so far as to call out to them, throwing a bunch of crude expletives their way or using nicknames like ‘Sweetheart’ and ‘Sugar’, hazing the new guys and trying to figure out which one of them might be easy pickings.
Jughead makes the mistake of letting his eyes wander and catches the gaze of a tall, dark kid with tattoos all up his neck and the guy winks at him, when he sees it, a filthy smile twisting his thin lips upwards. Jughead snaps his head away and keeps his eyes locked on the back of Fang’s head for the rest of the way.
Reflexively, he reaches out to pull his beanie further down over his ears only to be reminded that it’s not there anymore, fingers threading through his hair uselessly. His stomach sinks and he folds his arms across his chest, shoulders curling in defensively, feeling more exposed than he should.
Sweet Pea, apparently, spots someone he knows at one of the round tables and the rest of them follow as he heads over. There’s a group of young men gathered there, all of them flaunting Serpent tattoos, t-shirts rolled up to lay bare ornated shoulders or sleeves of sweaters bunched up at the elbow to show their forearms despite the cold. Them being in here instead of a ‘real’ prison means they’re all underage, but Jughead will be damned, if they look it. They all have an edge to them, broad frames, strong arms, and a hardness to their faces that ages them beyond their years and Jughead wonders how long they’ve been in here to give them that sort of look or if they brought it in with them.
One of them, the guy Jughead pegs as the leader of the group by the way the others are gathered around him, lifts his head and nods at Sweet Pea. He’s tall and shifty looking, blond hair cropped close to his skull and Serpent tattoo curling along the side of his neck like Sweet Pea’s does, only bigger.
“Heard you were coming.” The guy says in greeting. “Some shit they pulled there.”
Sweet Pea snorts. “Yeah. But what do you expect? When has the fucking Northside ever not had it out for us?”
“Right. Nothing new there. I see we’ve got some new faces, though.”, the guy gets up out of his seat and walks around the table, stops in front of Jughead, one hip leaning back against the hard metal edge, and gives him a thorough once over, gaze intent. The kind that makes Jughead’s skin feel uncomfortably itchy, but he forces himself to meet the Serpent’s eyes instead of ducking his head like he wants to. “Name’s Darwin. Who are you, then?”
Jughead winces a little, startled when Sweet Pea’s hand comes down on his shoulder. It’s weird, because Sweet Pea doesn’t usually make a point of touching Jughead and the hand feels oddly proprietorial. Jughead makes a move to shrug it off, but Sweet Pea’s grip tightens in a quiet warning and Jughead lets it be, confused.
“His name is Jones. He’s FP’s kid. Just passed initiation. Joined after FP got put away. FP could have named names to reduce his sentence, but didn’t, so we owe him. We look after our own.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jughead can see Fangs give Sweet Pea a look, eyebrows raised.
“It’s Jughead, actually.” Jug mumbles, brows furrowed, irritated about not getting what exactly’s going on. Sweet Pea is being weird and it’s creeping him out a little.
Darwin glances between Sweet Pea and Jughead and hums, amused. He offers a hand and Jughead takes it, Darwin’s grip tight enough to be painful, like guys like to do to show off their strength sometimes. Stupid posturing, if you ask him, Jughead thinks and tries not to wince. “Welcome to the family, then.”
After that, the mood changes again and Jughead breathes a quiet sigh of relief when Sweet Pea’s hand slips away form his shoulder and Darwin’s attention moves elsewhere.
“Alright,” Darwin rubs his hands together and brings his gaze back to Sweet Pea and the rest of the newcomers. “You know how this goes. You do us a small little favor and we make sure you have a smooth ride under out protection. It’s a simple deal. We all get something out of it.”
Sweet Pea nods solemnly and Darwin pulls what looks like a tooth brush out of his sleeve, careful to shield it from the eyes of the wandering guards. Jughead is confused at first, until he realizes that the bottom end of the plastic brush has been filed to a sharp point, the sides flattened out, keen-edged like a blade and his stomach drops out. It’s a fucking shiv.
“See that Ghoulie over there, alone by the bleachers?” Darwin nods in the general direction and, yeah, there’s a kid hanging around near the chain-link fence, fiddling distractedly with the hem of his sweater. He doesn’t look threatening at all, just like a guy who’s in a bit over his head. “We want you to shiv him. The guards have been bribed to look the other way.”
“What? Why?” Jughead blurts out, incredulous, a terrible sinking feeling spreading through his gut. Something close to panic.
Darwin raises an eyebrow at him, smile mean. “Because he’s a Ghoulie and I don’t like his fucking face. That’s why. And that’s about all the reason you need in here.”
Jughead looks around at the others, seeking some kind of support, but while some of them look scared, no one seems inclined to voice any objections. Fangs crosses his arms over his chest defensively and looks away, when Jughead meets his eyes, as do most of the others.
“I’ve got this.” Sweet Pea snaps, face a hard mask of trained indifference, and takes the proffered weapon from Darwin. Slips it partway up his sleeve to conceal it like Darwin had before and turns to stroll in the general direction of the bleachers, head ducked to not draw attention.
Jughead rushes after him, grabbing his elbow tightly to make him stop once he catches up with Sweet Pea. “You can’t be serious!” He hisses, disbelieving and scared, but still trying to keep his voice down. “I thought Serpents were supposed to look out for each other. That’s why it’s in the fucking code. Not ask you to do something like this.”
“It’s just how it works in here, Jones.” Sweet Pea hisses right back, that temper of his flaring like a small bonfire and Jughead squares his shoulders against the urge to shrink back form the flames. “Those guys are putting their necks out to keep us safe, so if they ask for a little favor in return, you do it!”
“This is not a little favor.” Jughead bursts out, incredulous. “It’s stabbing someone! There’s got to be another way. We don’t need them! There are enough of us that it won’t be so bad, if we just stick together.”
Sweet Pea gives him a hard look, mouth curled up in an ugly snarl. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Jones. I made that same mistake once and I’m sure as Hell never making it again.”
With that, Sweet Pea shrugs Jughead’s hand off and, after a glance around to make sure the coast is still clear, marches on, shoulders stiff and big hands curled into fists.
Jughead doesn’t know what to do except stand there like an idiot and stare after him, wide-eyed and haunted and feeling utterly inconsequential. He could call out to the guards, pull them in to stop this madness before it happens, but the look in Sweet Pea’s eyes when he’d said that last thing, it freezes him to the spot. He’s never seen Sweet Pea like that and it scares him, even if he hates himself for his own cowardice.
Out near the bleachers a commotion breaks loose as the Ghoulie collapses and the guards rush over. Sweet Pea, slinking away unnoticed, drops something into the grass as he walks and then shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweater to hide the blood on them.
~*~*~
After the incident in the yard, everyone is made to return to their cells for an early lock-down. The guards give a halfhearted attempt at finding the culprit, petting each of them down to look for weapons before they step into their cells, but not at all surprisingly, nothing turns up. Even if that works in their favor this time, Jughead thinks bitterly, it’s another piece of proof to how corrupt this whole institution really is.
He feels lightheaded and sick to his stomach, both from the hunger and from the way Sweet Pea keeps staring off into the distance, head held high and shoulders squared, but refusing to meet anyone’s eyes.
As soon as the bars to their cell clank shut behind them, Sweet Pea turns to the sink above the toilet in the corner and starts to scrub at his hands, the water that sloshes into the drain stained pink. For once, Jughead has no idea what to say.
No-body tells them whether or not the Ghoulie is going to make it.
~*~*~
That night, after lights out, Jughead lays awake in his bunk facing the wall, his back turned towards Sweet Pea, who refused to say a word for the remainder of the evening, opting to just ignore Jughead completely and sit there brooding instead. He shivers under his blanket, it’s too thin to be much of a shield against the chill, just as he’d predicted and he’s too hungry and too worked up to fall asleep.
Here in the dark, everything feels so much worse, the gravity of all that went down today, the stark reality of where he is and the fact that he has no idea how long it’s going to be until he sees the outside world again, settles onto his chest. A crushing weight that makes it hard to breathe. He feels lost, unmoored, a boat without an anchor caught in a storm and it’s scary and miserable and really, really fucked up.
The worst part, though, is when the noises start up.
At first it’s low, groans and grunts and the rustling of cloth against cloth, sneaker soles shuffling over concrete, like whoever’s responsible for making them is trying to keep it quiet, but some of it gets more prominent quickly enough. Jughead can’t really pin where exactly it’s coming form, all over the place, it seems like, from different cells all along the block. And for a moment he’s confused as to what’s going on, until eventually, he gets it.
It’s people fucking in the dark, in their cells.
And while some of it sounds like it might be consensual, a lot of it doesn’t. There are no screams or loud struggles or anything so dramatic, but it’s not that hard to distinguish how someone sounds who’s enjoying sex form how someone does, who isn’t. Jughead may not have any firsthand experience on the matter (of having sex), but it’s not exactly rocket science.
Further down the hallway, a kid starts crying, muffled but carrying none the less.
Jughead curls up further and presses his hands over his ears, trying to shut it all out, but it’s useless. He can feel his breathing quicken, his heartbeat kick up as he squeezes his eyes shut, a rope around his chest being pulled tighter until he feels lightheaded with the rising panic. He’s never had to deal with this particular brand of awfulness before, thank God, at least not firsthand and it seems like more than he knows how to handle now.
He startles badly, jerked out of his downward spiral when something solid hits his shoulder, bounces off of the wall in front of him and from there directly onto his face upsetting the bruise on the bridge of his nose. Bewildered, Jughead gropes for it in the gloom, only to realize that it’s a roll of fucking toilet paper.
“Hey!” He pushes himself up onto his elbows so that he can glare back over his shoulder at Sweet Pea, who’s laying on his bunk with his back turned towards Jughead, like he didn’t just use toilet paper as a damn projectile for God knows what reason. “What the fuck, Sweet Pea?”
Sweet Pea mumbles something too low for Jughead to catch and Jughead’s scowl deepens with his irritation.
“What?” He snaps, losing his patience.
“I said.” Sweet Pea repeats, louder this time and sounding about as pissed as Jughead feels. “Wad some of it up and stuff it into your ears. It helps. Maybe then you can stop freaking out for long enough to go the fuck to sleep.”
‘Oh’, Jughead thinks, dumbfounded, staring at Sweet Pea’s back like that’ll be enough to figure the guy out. Nothing else happens, though.
So Jughead huffs out a breath and drops back onto his sorry excuse for a pillow. He tears off some of the paper, balls it up and shoves it into his ears until most of the noises dim down enough for him to pretend like he’s not hearing them. It’s kind of uncomfortable, but it really does help. For a moment, he contemplates tossing the roll of toilet paper back at Sweet Pea, just because. He gives up on the notion, though, and places it on the little shelf above his head, next to his spare set of clothes. Then he curls back up on his bunk and closes his eyes, tries to pretend like he’s back in his dad’s trailer.
Like he got back from school, did his homework, put in some time to work on his novel, had dinner alone on the couch while watching a new episode of True Crime, and then fell into bed, an honest kind of tired that lends itself well to a good night’s sleep. The illusion doesn’t come easy and the hunger gnawing at his gut makes it harder, but it does come and, eventually, he drifts off, though he remains restless throughout the night and his dreams are darker and more confusing than usual.
~*~*~